Apple’s big September event is a few weeks out, and a fresh leak suggests camera-equipped AirPods might be ready for the big time. You read that right: AirPods with cameras in. Macworld’s Aaron Perris spotted a hidden demo video buried in the macOS 26.7, showing someone wearing the earbuds while a voiceover explains the pitch: “With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes saveable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later.”
If this is real, it feels like a dystopian slippery slope of surveillance, and I’m sad to see Apple taking part in it. It used to be that I trusted Apple to steer clear (for the most part) of the latest morally controversial fads. Modern-day Apple seems more content to go with the flow, and taken alongside its recent ramping up of advertising, it’s diluting what made Apple special to me for so many years.
The leaked product looks indistinguishable from a regular set of AirPods Pro 3 or AirPods 4, and that’s what makes it unsettling. It creates a kind of panopticon in every coffee shop and supermarket, where anyone so much as listening to a podcast might also have a tiny camera pointed right at you.
Tech-wise, it looks to be an extension of Visual Intelligence, the feature already on iPhone that can identify things like plants, animals, or books through your camera. That can be very useful. But it’s not always active, and bystanders can clearly see when you’re pointing a phone camera at something. AirPods with cameras lose that visibility, and in my view that’s what tips it from useful into creepy.
This kind of tech could be brilliant for visually impaired users – but it feels like a specialist tool, not something every AirPods owner needs to suddenly find strapped to their ears.
To their credit, Apple is much more careful about privacy than other tech giants, and I’d trust them over most to pull this off in a relatively safe manner. But it’s the principle that counts here, and I suspect plenty of iPhone users will feel similarly distrustful of always-on ear-mounted cameras.
Of course, it’s worth saying this could still turn out to be nothing. Leaks aren’t always legit, and there’s a decent chance this is nothing more than a demo unit that never makes it past R&D. We’ll know for sure when Apple’s event lands in early September.